Newport’s Craig Phillips has told for the first time how his Shropshire building business was ripped off by people taking advantage while he was distracted by his whirlwind of fame after becoming the first winner of the Big Brother reality television show.
Phillips says the frauds cost him around £60,000, plunging him into serious debt.
Writing in his newly-published autobiography, he says that his time in the Big Brother house in 2000 and the hectic aftermath as he was propelled into the national headlines meant that he was away from his building company for months on end, and unable to keep track on things.
“It seems that some of the builders I had employed - some of them just for a few weeks or months - decided to take advantage of this information.
“Their thinking must have gone like this: Well, Craig’s super-famous now. He’s obviously earning loads of money, because we’ve seen him all over the telly and newspapers. So why don’t we help ourselves to a little bit of what he’s got?”
Those responsible would go to builder’s yards and building centres where he had business accounts, and charge materials to his tab.
“There were so many branches in the Shropshire area, with so many different people working in them, that it was easy for a builder to walk in and say, ‘I work for Craig; put this on his account.’ They’d give my address and other information and put a squiggle on a counter slip.”
Finally his solicitor contacted all the stores and told them to freeze his accounts.
“I didn’t know for sure who was doing it; I had my suspicions, but no evidence.”
Phillips donated his £70,000 Big Brother prize money towards an operation for Shropshire Down’s Syndrome girl Jo Harris. After her death last year all the money raised for her operation was distributed to charities close to her family’s hearts.
Phillips tells how going on a bricklayer’s course at Telford College of Arts and Technology changed his life, increasing his knowledge and confidence, and setting him on a path which would see him becoming a sole trader at the age of 21, although as he built up his reputation he faced discrimination against his Liverpool roots.
“Craig Phillips “My Story: Building Beyond Big Brother”, is published by Bantam Press and costs £17.99.
